Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Children of Iraq Have Names (as do the children of Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Iran……)


David Krieger, November 1, 2002

The children of Iraq have names.
They are not the nameless ones.

The children of Iraq have faces.
They are not the faceless ones.

The children of Iraq do not wear Saddam’s face.
They each have their own face.

The children of Iraq have names.
They are not all called Saddam Hussein.

The children of Iraq have hearts.
They are not the heartless ones.

The children of Iraq have dreams.
They are not the dreamless ones.

The children of Iraq have hearts that pound.
They are not meant to be statistics of war.

The children of Iraq have smiles.
They are not the sullen ones.

The children of Iraq have twinkling eyes.
They are quick and lively with their laughter.

The children of Iraq have hopes.
They are not the hopeless ones.

The children of Iraq have fears.
They are not the fearless ones.

The children of Iraq have names.
Their names are not collateral damage.

What do you call the children of Iraq?
Call them Omar, Mohamed, Fahad.

Call them Marwa and Tiba.
Call them by their names.

But never call them statistics of war.
Never call them collateral damage.

David Krieger is a founder and president of The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation www.wagingpeace.org


Monday, February 18, 2013

Billionaires Secretly Fund Rightist Climate Crisis Deniers

By Countercurrents.org

15 February, 2013
Countercurrents.org

A group of billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate crisis reality. The money from the rightists goes to rightist organizations, a normal alliance.

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, guardian.co.uk, reported [1] on February 14, 2013:

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.

The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC.

Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.

Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organization assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.

"We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," she said in an interview.

By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to liberals."

Ball won't divulge names, but she said the stable of donors represents a wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organizations working to discredit climate science or block climate action.

Donors exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball said. They run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, they found common ground.

"Are there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not," she went on. "Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you tend to have a lot of differences on things like defense, immigration, drugs, the war, things like that compared to conservatives. When it comes to issues like the environment, if there are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced."

By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican Party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.

The ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against Barack Obama's environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress taking action on climate change.

Graphic: climate denial funding

Those same groups are now mobilizing against Obama's efforts to act on climate change in his second term. A top recipient of the secret funds on Wednesday put out a point-by-point critique of the climate content in the president's state of the union address.

And it was all done with a guarantee of complete anonymity for the donors who wished to remain hidden.

"The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing," said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.

"These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them," Davies said.

The trusts were established for the express purpose of managing donations to a host of conservative causes.

Such vehicles, called donor-advised funds, are not uncommon in America. They offer a number of advantages to wealthy donors. They are convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax breaks and are lawful.
That opposition hardened over the years, especially from the mid-2000s where the Greenpeace record shows a sharp spike in funds to the anti-climate cause.

In effect, the Donors Trust was bankrolling a movement, said Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who has extensively researched the networks of ultra-conservative donors.

"This is what I call the counter-movement, a large-scale effort that is an organized effort and that is part and parcel of the conservative movement in the United States" Brulle said. "We don't know where a lot of the money is coming from, but we do know that Donors Trust is just one example of the dark money flowing into this effort."

In his view, Brulle said: "Donors Trust is just the tip of a very big iceberg."

The rise of that movement is evident in the funding stream. In 2002, the two trusts raised less than $900,000 for the anti-climate cause. That was a fraction of what Exxon Mobil or the conservative oil billionaire Koch brothers donated to climate skeptic groups that year.
By 2010, the two Donor Trusts between them were channeling just under $30m to a host of conservative organizations opposing climate action or science. That accounted to 46% of all their grants to conservative causes, according to the Greenpeace analysis.

The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, the records show. When it came to blocking action on the climate crisis, the obscure charity in the suburbs was outspending the Koch brothers by a factor of six to one.

"There is plenty of money coming from elsewhere," said John Mashey, a retired computer executive who has researched funding for climate contrarians. "Focusing on the Kochs gets things confused. You can not ignore the Kochs. They have their fingers in too many things, but they are not the only ones."

It is also possible the Kochs continued to fund their favorite projects using the anonymity offered by Donor Trust.

But the records suggest many other wealthy conservatives opened up their wallets to the anti-climate cause – an impression Ball wishes to stick.

She argued the media had overblown the Kochs support for conservative causes like climate contrarianism over the years. "It's so funny that on the right we think George Soros funds everything, and on the left you guys think it is the evil Koch brothers who are behind everything. It's just not true. If the Koch brothers didn't exist we would still have a very healthy organization," Ball said.

On the issue Suzanne Goldenberg’s report [2] provide a more detail account:

The secretive funding channel known as the Donors Trust patronized a host of conservative causes.

But climate was at the top of the list. By 2010, Donors Trust had distributed $118m to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

Recipients included some of the best-known thinktanks on the right. The American Enterprise Institute, which is closely connected to the Republican Party establishment and has a large staff of scholars, received more than $17m in untraceable donations over the years, the record show.

But relatively obscure organizations did not go overlooked. The Heartland Institute, virtually unknown outside the small world of climate politics, received $13.5m from the Donors Trust.
Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group seen as the strike force of the conservative oil billionaire Koch Brothers, received $11m since 2002.

Levi Russell, spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, declined to comment on the importance of that support to the organization. "We're very grateful for each of the millions of activists and donors that make what we do possible," he said in an email.

The secretive funding network also funded individuals, such as Jo Kwong, an official at the Philanthropy Roundtable who was awarded $200,000 in 2010. And there was strong interest in funding media projects.

Some of the groups on the Donors Trust list would have struggled to exist without being bankrolled by anonymous donors.

The support helped the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (Cfact) expand from $600,000 to $3m annual operation. In 2010, Cfact received nearly half of its budget from those anonymous donors, the records show.

The group's most visible product is the website, Climate Depot, a contrarian news source run by Marc Morano. Climate Depot sees itself as the rapid reaction force of the anti-climate cause. On the morning after Obama's state of the union address, Morano put out a point by point rebuttal to the section on climate change.

The gregarious Morano is a former aide to the Republican senator Jim Inhofe notorious for declaring climate change the greatest hoax on mankind.

According to Cfact's tax filings, Morano, listed as communications director, was the most highly paid member of the organization.

However, Craig Rucker, the group's executive director, insisted the funding was not critical to their work. "It is not crucial in the least. Climate Depot's continued operation is not linked to funding from any particular source," he said.

Source:

[1] “Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks”,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network

[2] guardian.co.uk, Feb 14, 2013, “How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups”,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/donors-trust-funding-climate-denial-networks

Friday, February 15, 2013

Invitation to film screening at the Commission A Path to Dignity: The Power of Human Rights Education

15 February 2013


Cover of the Path to dignity film


Dear Friends and colleagues,

You are invited to a screening of A Path to Dignity: The Power of Human Rights Education. This 28 minute film was produced as a tool to raise awareness about the positive role that human rights education can play in fulfilling human rights. It presents three stories illustrating the impact of human rights education respectively on school children (India), law enforcement agencies (Australia) and women victims of violence (Turkey).

The film will be followed by a panel discussion on human rights education with Elizabeth Broderick, Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Vincenzo Andreacchio, Executive Officer of the South Australian Multicultural Education Committee and Mmaskepe Sejoe, Independent Consultant, Human Rights Work and Mongana Consultancies, formerly with Victoria Police and whose work is featured in the film.

This event is co-hosted by the Australian Human Rights Commission and the NSW Council for Human Rights Education. Please distribute this invitation widely among your networks.

A Path to Dignity: The Power of Human Rights Education

The film will be followed by a panel session featuring:

Elizabeth Broderick, Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner
Vincenzo Andreacchio, Executive Officer of the South Australian Multicultural Education Committee
Mmaskepe Sejoe, Consultant, Human Rights Work and Mongana Consultancies, formerly with Victoria Police
Date: Monday 25 February, 2013

Time: 6:00pm - 7:30pm - Refreshments served from 5:30pm

Venue: Australian Human Rights Commission, Level 3, 175 Pitt Street, Sydney

RSVP: Bookings are free but essential so please register here or go to http://www.trybooking.com/CKZV

The event is co-hosted with the NSW Council for Human Rights Education

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

My voice is not political. My voice is human.

(Dr Teck Young, Wee)

Common Dreams February 11, 2013

Afghans are hurting very badly.

And I am hurting too.

It’s hard for me, an ordinary citizen of Singapore, a medical doctor engaged in social enterprise work in Afghanistan and a human being wishing for a better world, to write this from Kabul.










Raz, Abdulhai and the author in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo: Voices for Creative Nonviolence)

But people are dying.

And children and women are feeling hopeless.

‘What’s the point in telling you our stories?’ asked Freba, one of the seamstresses working with the Afghan Peace Volunteers to set up a tailoring co-operative for Afghan women. ‘Does anyone hear? Does anyone believe us?’

Silently within, I answered Freba with shame,’ You’re right. No one is listening.’

So, I write this in protest against my government’s presence in the humanitarian and war tragedy of Afghanistan, as a way to lend my voice to Freba and all my Afghan friends.

I do so in dissent, against the global security of imprisoned minds.

I thought, “If no one listens as humans should, we should at least speak like free men and women.”

Singapore’s complicity in the humanitarian and war tragedy of Afghanistan

It is clear that the Taliban, the many Afghan and regional warlords, militia groups and the Afghan government are responsible for the current humanitarian and war tragedy of Afghanistan.

But Singapore is also responsible because it is one of the fifty U.S. /NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) coalition countries working with the corrupt Afghan government (rated the most corrupt country in 2012).

While the Singapore government would never support any corrupt Singaporean leader even for a day, they have sent troops to support the most corrupt leaders on earth! If accountability is at all important, we cannot say, ‘Oh…never mind!”

Moreover, Singapore has inadvertently become a minor accomplice of the self-interests of the U.S. government in Afghanistan ; The U.S. Vice President , Joe Biden, spoke at the Munich Security Conference recently, "The United States is a Pacific power. And the world's greatest military alliance ( NATO ) helps make us an Atlantic power as well. As our new defense strategy makes clear, we will remain both a Pacific power and an Atlantic power."

American power and economic interests naturally do not include the best interests of ordinary Singaporeans or Afghans.

The Afghan humanitarian tragedy

In the normal, logical world, it should inspire the doubt and curiosity of Singaporeans that while the U.S. /NATO coalition was spending billions of dollars every week on the Afghan war ( the U.S. alone was spending two billion dollars every week ), Afghans have been perishing under one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world. At least 36% live below the poverty line and 35% of Afghan men do not have work . The UN calls the acute malnutrition of nearly one million children in the Afghan south ‘shocking’ . Almost three quarters of all Afghans do not have access to safe drinking water .

On several occasions in the past few years, Afghanistan was declared the worst country for children and women, and yet, many of us still hold this warped presumption, “Afghanistan is the worst country for children and women but whatever we are doing over there MUST somehow be right!”

The Afghan war tragedy

In the normal, logical world, it should at least matter to ‘result-orientated’ Singaporeans that the very expensive Afghan/U.S. coalition’s ‘war against terrorism’ has increased rather than decreased ‘terrorism’, with the Global Terrorism Index reporting that terrorist strikes in the region have increased four times since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

Even President Karzai said in the UK recently that the security situation in southern Helmand province of Afghanistan was better before British troops were deployed.

Adding to this cynical mess of increased ‘terrorism’ at the hands of global superpowers, the U.S. has established an epicenter of drone warfare in Afghanistan, with Afghans and Pakistanis and other ‘insurgents’ as their ‘targets’, and Singapore as one of their many allies. Singapore has had teams helping in drone reconnaissance operations, reconnaissance that may have eventually ended up with a U.S. /NATO decision to kill someone without trial.

I had raised this personal concern once in a meeting room at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ; I was appreciative of the attentiveness given to this issue, but sensed that there was no great interest in ‘investigating’ how Singapore’s co-operation in the drone operations in Afghanistan may be violating international law, as was suggested by the ex-UN Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Killings, Mr Philip Alston.

A recent New York Times article highlights these ‘fears for U.S. allies’, reporting on a lawsuit in the British courts that ‘accuses British officials of becoming “secondary parties to murder” by passing intelligence to American officials that was later used in drone strikes.’ My life has been changed by listening to Afghan friends like Raz Mohammad tell how ‘drones bury beautiful lives’.

The U.N. is finally living up to its charter to ‘remove the scourge of war’ by duly investigating drone warfare. Major U.S. newspapers are also asking for more transparency over Obama’s weekly, premeditated ‘kill lists’. There has been concern over unchecked Powers getting even more out of all jurisdictions with the appointment of ‘drone justifier’ John Brennan as Obama’s CIA Director nominee.

Even the UN Committee on the Rights of a Child has been "alarmed" at reports of the deaths of hundreds of children from US attacks and air strikes in Afghanistan since the committee last reviewed U.S. practices in 2008.

Singapore should be alarmed too.

Singapore’s own identity as a militarized, authoritarian country

Deep within, like most human beings, Freba yearns for a decent livelihood without war. Abdulhai and the Afghan Peace Volunteers wish for friends from all 195 countries of the world, a better world without borders!

What kind of identity do Singaporeans wish for their country, a peaceful and friendly country or otherwise?

Again, I’m concerned. We like pictures of be-medaled soldiers more than unsung ‘Mother Teresa’ heroines. Our government has a significant number of ex-military commanders.

According to the Global Militarisation Index released by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC), Singapore has been the second most militarized nation in the world for years. The latest ranking puts Singapore just second to Israel and one brutal position more militarized than Syria.

The world is awakening, the human race is revolutionizing, and so is Singapore’s electorate. Most ordinary folk in the world don’t want to send missiles or guns to kill strangers in other places! Human beings have always preferred otherwise.

What also worries me is that this militarized mindset may be behind Singapore’s enthusiasm in the drone show-business, and in ‘unintentionally’ being part of the U.S.’ ‘Asia pivot’ by hosting four U.S. littoral combat ships.

Even on the economic front, while Singapore has one of the higher Gini coefficients of income inequality in the world, not many people in Singapore are aware of or debating Singapore’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, again a partnership that corporate America is pushing for.

What Singapore has aligned herself with in Afghanistan is militarized authoritarianism that concentrates profit and power in the hands of a few. While this follows global norms, such a system works mainly for the wealth and power of the 1% in the short term, but not for the daily needs of the 99% in either the short or long term.

I personally think that both the democratic and socialist practices of today are ‘non-progressive’ vehicles for the rule of the few ‘Kings, Emperors, Presidents, and Prime Ministers’ over the many presumably ‘ignorant, helpless and sometimes lazy’ subjects. These elitist systems tend to maintain control by ‘pacifying the masses’ through formal education, mainstream media and force.

I hope Singapore can steer itself away from this ‘norm’, an ugly ‘norm’ in which war becomes fun, like when Prince Harry described his combat pilot job in Afghanistan as "a joy … because I'm one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I'm probably quite useful."

I believe that for effective defense and genuine security, we ought to be friends with neighbours and all peoples of other lands rather than militarists with superior weapons.

Perhaps these are differences in opinions which can be included in Our Singapore Conversation.

It’s hard for me to write this, but I am sincerely ashamed to be a citizen of the 2nd most militarized nation on earth, a country that has participated in the legally-questionable drone warfare in Afghanistan.

Thankfully, I have hope in Singaporeans like I have hope in humanity. There are alternatives. The world is awakening, the human race is revolutionizing, and so is Singapore’s electorate. Most ordinary folk in the world don’t want to send missiles or guns to kill strangers in other places! Human beings have always preferred otherwise.

My voice is not political. My voice is human.

Afghans are hurting very badly.

And I am hurting too.
Hakim

Hakim (weeteckyoung@gmail.com) is a mentor for the Afghan Peace Volunteers in Kabul. www.ourjourneytosmile.com

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Military intervention can be a cure worse than the disease

The new year is scarcely a month old. Yet we have seen enough to know that the fires raging in different parts of the Middle East and North Africa will not easily abate – and that the firefighting efforts of Western governments may prove no more successful than in the past. From Algeria to Afghanistan…
Author

Joseph Camilleri

Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University

Disclosure Statement

Joseph Camilleri does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

The Conversation provides independent analysis and commentary from academics and researchers.

We are funded by CSIRO, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, UTS, UWA, Canberra, CDU, Deakin, Flinders, Griffith, La Trobe, Murdoch, Newcastle. QUT, Swinburne, UniSA, USQ, UTAS, UWS and VU.

La Trobe University Member of The Conversation.

The new year is scarcely a month old. Yet we have seen enough to know that the fires raging in different parts of the Middle East and North Africa will not easily abate – and that the firefighting efforts of Western governments may prove no more successful than in the past.

From Algeria to Afghanistan, we see governments whose survival depends on authoritarian rule or the continued support of external powers, or some mixture of the two. In a few places, in particular in Tunisia and Egypt, there has been talk of a transition to democratic institutions, but the path is strewn with obstacles. In many more places, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iraq and Yemen to name a few, terrorist cells operating under different guises and names are fanning the flames, moving elusively from one flash point to another.

Attacks by Islamist insurgents on US outposts in Benghazi, Libya, at a gas plant in Algeria, and in Mali over the past 12 months may at first sight appear to be unconnected. A closer look suggests they are the interconnected symptoms of a deeper ailment.

In Algeria, on January 16, a group linked with al Qaeda took more than 800 people hostage at the Tigantourine gas facility near In Aménas. The raid mounted by the Algerian special forces managed to free nearly 700 Algerian workers and more than 100 foreigners, but at a high cost: 39 hostages were killed along with an Algerian security guard and 29 militants.

In Mali, the steady collapse of state control over the north of the country was followed by an inconclusive military coup in March 2012, which did little to stem the steady advance of the Saharan branch of al Qaeda. The insurgents were soon in control of the Tuareg north, effectively seceding from the rest of Mali and establishing a harsh form of Islamic law. This is the backdrop to French military intervention which has, for the time being, driven Islamists from the major cities they had occupied across northern Mali.

There is reason to think that in each case the terrorists received both weapons and training from militia camps in Libya.

During her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 23, Hilary Clinton acknowledged as much. She said:

There is no doubt that the Algerian terrorists had weapons from Libya. There is no doubt that the Malian remnants of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have weapons from Libya.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it more forcefully, saying, “Those whom the French and Africans are fighting now in Mali are the (same) people who overthrew the Gaddafi regime, those that our Western partners armed.”
A French soldier rides an armoured vehicle through the Malian town Timbuktu. AAP/Arnaud Roine

He may well have added that the Taliban, which the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan for more than 11 years, is in part “the monster” the US helped to create when it decided to support and arm Islamist groups during the 1980s.

We are also seeing the revolving door of Islamist violence and Western intervention at work in Syria’s tragic devastation. In recent months, well armed Jihadist groups appear to be gaining the upper hand among the rebel groups fighting the Assad regime.

In this confused picture, one thing is becoming clearer by the day. US military interventions in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 have turned out to be costly operations, greatly sapping the strength of the American state, and if anything widening the spread of terror. The Western intervention in Libya suggests more of the same.

Despite hundreds of US drone strikes, the death of Osama bin Laden and the fracturing of al Qaeda, the jihadist movement is organisationally more flexible and geographically more widespread than ever. With US and allied forces to end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year, the Taliban threat remains potent. Some 1100 members of the Afghan security forces have been killed in the past six months, while army personnel have been deserting in growing numbers. The number of al Qaeda fighters may have fallen in Afghanistan, but many have regrouped in Pakistan or shifted their focus to Syria, Libya, Iraq or Mali, Somalia and Yemen.

French President Francois Hollande shakes hands with a French soldier in Timbuktu, Mali. AAP/STR

France’s intervention in Mali may have temporarily disrupted the plans of Islamist groups, but for how long? François Hollande may have received a hero’s welcome in Timbuktu and Bamako, but French forces can’t remain forever. And, once they leave, will Malian forces, even with the support of neighbouring African states, succeed where they have failed in the past?

The political reality is that relations between the north and south of the country have been historically fraught. The Tuareg nomadic communities of the north have launched major rebellions over the years against what they see as exploitative southern rule. This perception is repeatedly reinforced by stories of massacres, the poisoning of wells and score-settling by pro-government militias against Tuareg civilians. Reports of mob lynchings and other reprisal killings of Tuaregs and Arabs by the Malian army as it retakes control of the north of the country can only fan the flames of grievance and mistrust.

The question, then, is not should international forces intervene to protect communities in need of protection? The “responsibility to protect” has rightly become a universally accepted principle.

Instead, the questions are: what form should protection take? Who should do the protecting? What can be done to prevent, rather than simply react to, mass atrocity crimes? What are appropriate strategies for dealing with rampant corruption and deep-seated ethnic, religious and economic divisions? And importantly, who may decide on these questions?

Military intervention conducted or orchestrated by the United States and its allies, however well intentioned, seems increasingly the wrong answer.